Press Release

During November and December the George Adams Gallery will feature Saints, Sinners and Sacrifices: Religious Imagery in Contemporary Latin American Art. The exhibition will include 13 paintings and works on paper by seven artists: Carlos Alfonzo, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Jose Bedia, Enrique Chagoya, Rosana Palazyan, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell and Nahum Zenil.

Saints, Sinners and Sacrifices is not an exhibition of religious paintings and drawing per se, but an examination of the usage - often without apparent religious overtone - of such imagery in the contemporary art in of the Caribbean and the other Americas.

For example, Nahum Zenil's Self-portrait with Angels shows artist with a flight of small, winged self-portraits emanating from his head; rather than depicting his elevation to sainthood, Zenil here refers to artistic inspiration. On the other hand, Carlos Alfonzo's Figure and Chair, 1991, an apparent abstract composition, contains explicit religious imagery recognizable only once the symbols are deciphered. The central form emerging from out of a box in the lower is the many-eyed Yemaya. Her power is represented by two curlicue lines that are a specific reference to a weightlifter's arm, and her sanctity is further reinforced by three arrows piercing her back, a reference to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastion. This work, it turns out, is closely related to another painting by Alfonzo made the same year titled God in the Studio as is made clear by the presence of the artist himself in the form of a eyeball resting on a chair to the right. Roche-Rabell's The Black Man Always Hides His Left Hand, 1993, carries an obvious religious reference: the fingertips of the hand of the title appear as five Santos. But that Roche's intent is not so simple may be gleaned by the title: the left hand is traditionally associated with the sinister, which in the painting now appears as the right. In fact the painting, once the iconography of the other elements such as the doilies and the next are understood as an ironic commentary on racism in the Caribbean.

Other works in the show include, for example, Bedia's Sacrifio which depicts a tree figure holding a rooster and a knife over the head of a young boy, an image inspired by the coming-of-age traditions shared by Palo Monte and Judaism. Palazyan's depiction of the death of her brothers appears as a pieta stitched in thread. Chagoya Time Passes depicts an African fetish cannibalizes Picasso in Monet's garden, Azaceta over-size canvas Latin American Victims shows a bound, nude figure impaled on stakes.